[Article] Can a Dress Shirt (or in our case, the art and science of bra-fitting) be Racist?

A custom-fit, tailored shirt company asks its customers for their ethnicity when determining fit.

With the “ethnicity” question, is this entrepreneur courageously addressing the proposition that we’re different according to our ancestry, and propelling us toward a post-racial future? Or is he pretending to be scientific as a marketing gimmick, while actually enforcing false, outdated and possibly dangerous ideas about race?

I'm not sure if ABTF has ever opened the can of worms that is bra-fitting by ethnicity. Personally, I've heard anecdotes from Asian-American women that purchasing bras in Asia will get them a better fit. I've also heard theories about shallowness, projection, root width, and root height based on ethnicity. But, as the author of the article points out... is this a kind of racial profiling?

Are we ready to dredge up centuries of racial strife, simply for a perfect fit?

I agree that this is a slippery slope to go down. The history and racism of ethnic profiling, especially in the U.S., is well-known. That said, the context of this is much, MUCH different than proving that white people are superior to people of color. This is simply acknowledging that people of different ethnic backgrounds are shaped differently with the intention of supplying a better product. I feel as long as that information is not sold, is not used to support shit-ass racist theories and is used solely by the company to make sure their customers are getting the right fitting clothing then it's probably mostly okay. Acknowledging differences in one another is not the same as making those differences about superiority/inferiority.

We acknowledge that not all women are shaped the same way and that certain clothing brands work better on someone who is pear shaped versus hourglass shaped. We acknowledge that boobs are different shapes in this subreddit.

The other is that, well, maybe our body types do differ by race — and just accepting this reality frees us from having to wrestle with the Caucasian body proportions that dominate most clothing design.

Fit models for clothing in the U.S. are predominately white which means clothes made for U.S. markets are made for Caucasian people. That's also problematic.

(Also, should I be trying to have a real conversation while it's April 1st? I figured I'd give it the old college try anyways.)

Sneaky hobbitses should be looking at precious shape guides! Nasty hobbitses trying to stuff precious into bad garment is a problem for whole world. Gollum only wears bras that are measured and fit his poor, lonesome frame.

Sorry, should've clarified. I'm on my iPad, so it looks pretty much like the desktop. Is it from a movie? I don't use a mouse on my iPad, but I see the Boobins, changes to up vote/down votes, and such on it. I know there is some creature. I looked it up and it said that it was either Tolkien or Lord of The Rings. I know of one of them, but I had no idea this Tolkien movie existed. Probably due to it being sci-fi. Edit: fantasy, another thing that isn't my scene.

Edit: I knew of the author Tolkien, forgot he existed. Apparently he wrote the Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit. I think I only knew of those being movies.

I definitely agree with it being a slippery slope. And I would be really interested to know what these supposed generalized differences are. I have had the benefit of living my entire life in an ethnic melting pot type area (went to school in a district that boasted having kids from at least 150 different countries), and in my experience everyone comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes- boobs, butts, tummies, legs, we're all different and we're all the same. My 2 cents. :)

Edit- I just read the article. Very interesting stuff. We just need more size/shape diversity in everything.

Eh. I'm not convinced by this. Because we're such vastly differing shapes even within ethnic groups and because so many of us are mixed anyway....it seems too convenient. Asian woman comes in, direct her to the "Asian shape" bras? Why not rather learn to measure and assess properly and direct her to the shallow bras or whatever she needs as an actual singular person? It sounds a lot easier than assessing someone's ethnicity then directing them to the underwear you think fits that ethnic group then having to do the individual assessment anyway when she doesn't fit your preconceived matrix.

I believe, we had a user here who was making some kind of research project to try to find a link between etnicity and breast shape. I was even filling some questionary for them. She(or someone in the thread?) had a suggestion that European women in general have more narrow breast roots and that's why the most of EU bras are traditionally constructed narrower at the same sizes than American bras are. Maybe, someone else may find this topic?